Message #3312

From: Melinda Green <melinda@superliminal.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] Miegakure (and off-topic AlphaGo and quantum chess)
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2016 21:02:07 -0700

Thanks Remi! Nice to hear from you again. There are a few more minor
MC4D features coming soon. It feels good to get some stuff done that
I’ve been meaning to do forever.

Thanks for the great links. I had seen the new Miegakure video already.
It’s really amazing what that guy’s done. He demoed it at a geometry
party I was at two years ago and he had been working on it full-time,
single-handed, non-stop for at least a couple of years before that. He
must now have six years of development with no product and no income! It
looks lovely and polished but it did back then too. That kind of
personal investment and risk would drive me completely nuts. You learn
so much from having people use your stuff early and that saves you from
so much wasted effort in the long run but I guess he’s very different
and wants to get it perfect the first time. I sure hope it’s successful.

The quantum chess game is new to me and I think it’s very cool. I agree
with Anna that there needs to be a better balance between classical and
quantum moves because I suspect that classical moves are more useful
when you’re really trying to win, but I’ve not tried it so I don’t
really know. I expect he’ll find some rule modifications that make both
types of moves equally powerful. The nice thing he’ll get lots of early
feedback in contrast to Miegakure which is still essentially vaporware.

Yes, the AlphaGo match was a spectacular success and I enjoyed the whole
thing much more than I even hoped. I had made a prediction that neither
player would win all games, and I was right. I also slightly favored
AlphaGo and it did win. I expect there will be a rematch or other sort
of match within about one year at which time I predict it will be next
to impossible for any single human to beat it. In that case I think that
humans should be able to form teams that work together to beat it. That
seems only fair since AlphaGo is distributed across a thousand or so
CPUs. I hope the development work continues and that a stand-alone
version becomes available. It would be such a gift to the Go world. And
yes, computer versus computer Go should become a great spectator sport.
I really like the idea of the AIs becoming so powerful that we have
trouble even following what’s happening when they play each other.
Hopefully they’ll be able to explain it to us! :-D

Good luck with the 120-cell and the other puzzles on your list,
-Melinda

On 3/16/2016 5:38 PM, thesamer thesamer@interia.pl [4D_Cubing] wrote:
> Hello to all!
>
> I also have enjoyed a lot AlphaGo playing Lee Sedol (and of course
> awesome commentary of Michael Redmond!). I read that facebook had also a
> take on creating AI to play Go. Maybe soon we will see two machines
> fighting with each other! :-)
>
> BTW: Have you seen Quantum Chess?
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LikdmXfWO2A (absolutely mind-blowing,
> waiting for release of the game publicly in 2 months from now).
>
> Ok.. ending the off-topic: today I have encountered interesting 4D game.
> Now I notice that post here from December shows that you are aware of that:
> http://miegakure.com/
>
> However the new video might be interesting, since it shows a little bit
> technology behind it: https://youtu.be/vZp0ETdD37E
>
> All the best,
> Remi
>
> Ps. I must return someday to 4D puzzle solving. For me awaits 120-Cell,
> 7D, shortest 2^4 etc. I’m still following the tread. Congrats on recent
> update of MagicCube4D!